I’m
a member of the SILENT-GENERATION. The too-quiet-bunch that were here
just before the Baby-Boomers: The ones that were never trusted by
that horde of self-interested animals who spread across the world
after WWII.

We
became ‘The Watchers’. We tracked the crimes and ‘the-
everything-else’ that is carefully catalogued in this video. It
gives no quarter in its analytical-anatomical surgery of exactly what
we allowed to happen to the planet and to virtually everything of
value to the populations. We must now pay the ultimate price for
‘that silence’. Yet we continue to RESIST WITH FORCE everything
that could set us free, which has already died, long before now…(1)

I
left Oklahoma City and came to San Francisco in 1965 for the funeral
of the Hippie Generation. Reality had overcome the rise of the flower
children and I wanted to see it for myself. I only stayed a few
months before I ran out of money and returned to OKC. That was long
enough to confirm what many suspected: There was no depth to that
‘rebellion’. Back in Oklahoma I continued to work on, "The
State of the Nation 1966”. (2)

I
had begun drawing eight years before in1958. I thought images could
change everything about the massive attack on the American way of
life, led by LBJ that had begun. It was a spontaneous understanding
within the arts and society of that time that could have formed the
core of a new Renaissance for literature, art, poetry, theater, music
and more—based on a wide variety of people coming together—to
blend the arts back into the core of American life.

This
was based on people and talents from across the spectrum coming
together to be able to support themselves and expand public awareness
through conversations and interests in a wide variety of ways.
Studios and gallery spaces surrounded by Book stores, coffee houses
and theaters where people of like interests could find much of what
many were still looking for under one roof.

The
idea itself was as old as the basic awareness’s of ordinary people
who have always been curious about almost everything in the world. I
thought that perhaps active artists, writers and musicians might be
able to use their talents to create new centers in the cities’
densely populated areas; to fulfill much of what was missing in the
already corrupted media and government sub-worlds of the very early
seventies: But that was not to be.

The
burgeoning old-world-order had begun to implement thru:
Compartmentalization, outrageous-taxation and the rising idioms of
their control to crush any effort toward anything that could
revitalize the arts - in any way.

Whether
one tried to sell prints or CD’s, live-music or poetry readings,
all of that was massively discouraged. Even the basics of
conversations in coffee houses needed to be stamped-out. The banning
of cigarettes managed to severely cut into conversation and
attendance in local bars as well (The same people that want to
ban-guns now, were secretly trying to reinstitute prohibition).
Anything primarily social needed to be restricted and taxed to the
point that it would never survive, as many things did before these
draconian new laws.

If
it was live-music CABARET-TAXES were imposed to the point where music
was prohibited. The Dancers in Flamenco Clubs where musicians and
dancers performed nightly free, eventually fell under the
city-licensing fees that destroyed the best of the best in San
Francisco; at El Mason in North Beach. Top-tier Jazz musicians, who
lived in the City, couldn’t find work here because of the
cabaret-taxes which were beyond prohibitive.

Ironically;
had that not been the case the places where jazz could have been
allowed would have increased the business of every place where such
performances were encouraged, the same was also true of other musical
forms as well. San Francisco could have turned into a global
entertainment Mecca that would have surpassed anything seen elsewhere
in the country. Yet this was firmly killed by city hall, even though
the increase in ordinary business taxes would have hugely surpassed
anything they had been able to pay-in-taxes before. But this was NOT
about business PROFITS—THIS WAS ABOUT KLILLING THE MUSIC and the
arts.

Had
this not happened the rise of the level of garbage in films,
television and virtually all the galleries would have been impeded if
there had been real venues where people could come and converse as
well as linger to watch and interact with the various artists and
writers. But the “End of that Time” had already been written many
years before and those of us that fought hard to keep LIFE alive were
doomed to fail.

This
would have been fucking phenomenal if it had been allowed to work!
San Francisco wasn’t the only place where these kinds of ideas were
taking root. But wherever an international following lived, was then
over-ripe for innovative entertainment, and we KNEW it!

The
cities financial demands were designed to make it impossible for
artistic entrepreneurs to survive. That was followed up on during the
Dot-Com bubble of the eighties; when the rest of the people in the
arts were unceremoniously priced out of San Fiasco, which is today
better known as Tel-Aviv West!

The
point here ladies and gentlemen is: What we are facing now was
preconceived long; long before we ever reached this point that we
have come to today.

Agenda
21 would never have anywhere to ‘be’ if Americans had grown in
totally different directions, at any time, in our blood-drenched
history—but that too was apparently not to be.

Now
we need to come together as people and not as politically-approved
board-pieces on someone else’s chess-board. This is the last time
that any of us will have even a shot at succeeding. (3)